Tag: Rener Gracie

It seems like more and more professional ball players of every stripe are taking up Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA training in their off-seasons. Rarely, however, have we gotten much more than general interview references to the training they are doing.

Jiu Jitsu and salesmen extraordinaires (seriously, Rener could probably sell you your own urine) Rener and Ryron Gracie, sons of UFC founder Rorian Gracie, bring us a pretty great inside look at the fight training that at least one NFL star has been doing this past off-season. On the latest episode of their YouTube series, The Gracie Way, Rener and Ryron train with their student and Kansas City Chief All-Pro outside linebacker, Tamba Hali.

It looks like Hali has really bought in to “The Gracie Way.” The 270 pound giant is focused not on getting bigger and stronger, but on getting leaner and more wholistic in his approach to health, it seems as he reveals that he has lost fifteen pounds so far training with the Gracies.

First, Hali does some hill runs, alternately pulling and pushing Ryron, who is on a skate board, up-hill. We also see Hali eat some of Rener’s sandwiches and acai bowls as well as training in a gi at their Gracie Academy.

Hali not only rolls with the Gracies and other students in the video, but also with former UFC light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida. Check all that out, plus Halis reflections on his training and life style over haul and his blue belt ceremony.

Then, get out there and do some training yourself on this Sunday afternoon. Only, you know, leave your computer on CagePotato and come back real quick to check out more later because we’re needy and start missing you quickly.

Al Bundy may have exaggerated his exploits at Polk High, but the actor who portrayed him on Married With Children, Ed O’Neill, actually has real athletic chops to speak of. O’Neill played linebacker in college at Ohio State and Youngstown State University, and was briefly signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers where, according to O’Neill, “I stayed for about a minute.”

While acting in Hollywood, O’Neill discovered the gentle art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He began training under Rorian Gracie and never stopped, earning a black belt in 2007.

“I began studying Gracie Jiu Jitsu over 20 years ago,” said O’Neill in a Metamoris press release distributed Tuesday. “I was actually very hesitant to start, but a 10-minute session with Rorion Gracie was enough to get me hooked. For me, studying Jiu Jitsu has been an amazing experience. In a way it’s given me a second family.”

O’Neill will provide color commentary for the highly-anticipated submission-only pro invitational Metamoris II, which takes place in Los Angeles on June 9th and will be broadcast live on their website, metamoris.com. O’Neill will join his long-time teacher’s son, Rener Gracie, in providing the commentary for the Metamoris II stream.

And we gotta say, Bundy O’Neill definitely knows his stuff. His assertion that Jones may actually welcome wrist control from the guard as a way of setting up an elbow strike is an incredibly astute observation to make and one I hadn’t personally considered when dissecting Jones’ game, so a kudos is in order for the Emmy-nominated star of Modern Family. Although Vitor has admitted to easing off the armbar when he heard Jones’ arm pop, the Gracies believe that had Jones not attempted to slam his way out of the armbar, Belfort would have never even come close to pulling it off in the first place. We know Jones claimed that he needed to embrace his Jiu-Jitsu a little more after the fight, and perhaps moments like this confirm that, but the fact that the champ was able to submit a black belt like Belfort with a picture perfect Americana shows that he surely knows a thing or two about the ground game when he needs to.

Check out the full video, which also breaks down Jones’ fight-winning Americana, after the jump.

If you were to ask 100 MMA fans to define mixed martial arts in a word, their responses would differ greatly. If you asked the same census group to define the sport in a name, nearly all would give you the same answer: Gracie.

While some would likely say that Rorian and Royce — having respectively founded the Ultimate Fighting Championship and won three of its first four tournaments in decisive fashion — were the impetus behind their answer, most would likely point to Gracie jiu-jitsu originators Helio and Carlos Gracie as the reason for their response.

Carlos and Helio were innovators, who, although they didn’t invent the art of jujitsu, or it’s “successor,” judo, they did arguably revolutionize the hybrid fighting art, making it more effective than both, especially when used by smaller combatants against larger opponents.

To the brothers, their variation of the centuries old Japanese martial art form, now known universally as “Brazilian” or “Gracie” jiu-jitsu, was not just simply efficacious in competition; it was equally as useful in self-defense and street fighting scenarios — a point they have stressed since introducing it to the masses more than 80 years ago.

Decades before Rorian and Royce made history with the UFC, their father Helio represented the Gracie name and defended its honor in scores of challenge matches designed to prove that GJJ — an offshoot of Kodokan judo, which was taught to them by Japanese immigrant and judo master Mitsuyo Maeda, was more effective than any other form of martial art.

Our friends at MMANY.se passed along this recent interview they did with Rorian Gracie in which they spoke with the UFC co-founder about whether or not he had any regrets about selling off his stake in the company before it blew up in popularity.

“No, I don’t regret it at all. I’m happy that I’m no longer involved in this because it doesn’t reflect my vision for what I first came up with. Money-wise, it’s a big money-making venture, but for me it was always about much more than the money. It was the ability to showcase a fight that was for real. That’s what brought me to America. Thats what earned the respect for the Gracie name, is being able to fight against everybody and anybody at any time. Now that everybody has learned the system, of course it’s levelled the playing field. Everybody has learned jiu-jitsu and ultimately that’s what I’m happy with.”

In a way, it’s perfectly fitting that this video would come out the same day that Ryan Dunn died. Dunn was perhaps best known from that infamous scene in Jackass: The Movie in which he stuffed a toy car up his ass then went to the doctor complaining of a stomach ache. (Is it ironic that his tragic passing was car-related? I still don’t know what the word “ironic” means.)

Assuming there’s YouTube in the afterlife, I think Dunn would appreciate this prank. Instructional video star Rener Gracie dresses his associate Brian Ortega up as Bubba the Grappling Dummy, then films the reaction of people who are asked to retrieve him from Rener’s office at the Gracie Academy. Personally, my favorite reaction is the dude at 2:55 who gets his balls grabbed (“God damn you. You suck!”), and Grand Master Rorion at 5:07, who manages to keep control of the situation. Good times. RIP, Ryan.

If you were blitzed out of your mind on Zima Saturday night at Dave and Buster’s and you couldn’t wrap your head around how two solid black belts like Dustin Hazelett and Charles Oliveira were seemingly effortlessly submitted within the first three minutes of their respective UFC 124 lightweight bouts, the video above should shed some light on the subject for you.

As part of their ongoing "Gracie Breakdown" series, Rener and Ryron Gracie sat down and dissected how Mark Bocek set up the triangle-armlock he tapped Hazelett out with and the ankle lock-to-kneebar transition Jim Miller used to submit Oliveira with to hand the up-and-coming Brazilian his first MMA loss.

They also outline how both losers could have potentially defended and escaped the submissions.